How do you prevent Steam from using a game as a reference point to recommend other games to you?

[Eli]

So this has been an issue that's annoyed me for a long time but no matter where I look I can't find an answer. But whenever I'm going through my queue, or through the store itself under the "Relevant" section, there will be games that I've played in the past that are 'similar' and are being used as reference points to recommend these games.

How do I remove these referenced games from being used to recommend anything? These are free games that I downloaded just for sh*ts and giggles a long time ago, and I've long since deleted them from my Steam account, which I was told would solve the problem. I have these games set to 'Ignored' in the store as well, which under the Ignore tab it says: "Hide from store, ignore notifications, and don't use this to generate other recommendations."

These were low-quality, jokey games that I downloaded because I thought they'd be good for a laugh and now I want them gone. I don't care that the game I'm looking at has one similar tag as this game I regret playing over a year ago, which means that the system picking games that are being used as references to decide what is relevant to my tastes is in fact outdated.

And no, I'm not going to just ignore it or accept that these games are forever going to remind me that I played them. If I delete them from my account I expect all traces of them to be gone, especially if Steam itself is trying to recommend me new games to buy.

And if I could get it to stop using f*cking Garry's Mod as a reference game by using the same method that'd be fantastic.

[Crazy Tiger]

Play other games. I once played Codename Panzers as my only game for two weeks, suddenly my DQ was 70% WW2 RTS games. I rarely play such games, I got nostalgic, and I got "punished" for it. Two weeks of playing other games resulted in my DQ changing back to how it was, so to speak.

[Eli]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Play other games. I once played Codename Panzers as my only game for two weeks, suddenly my DQ was 70% WW2 RTS games. I rarely play such games, I got nostalgic, and I got "punished" for it. Two weeks of playing other games resulted in my DQ changing back to how it was, so to speak.

I haven't touched these games in almost two years, and it's been about that long since I went through Support to remove them from my account. I haven't touched Garry's Mod since I bought it in 2016 and yet it's being used as a 'relevant' game when Steam is recommending games to me in my queue. It's not even installed, and I had to do a complete clean install of Steam and all of my games about two months ago onto a new hard drive. Granted I still own Garry's Mod but why are these free games (that I deleted from my account through the support system) still popping up under the "Similar to these games you've played" section?

[SeansShow]

The best thing to do is just not use steam side recommendations completely and if you want recommendations go to a games hub and ask, what other games do people play, what games are like this etc.

I frequently filter on tags for other genres to look for buying suggestions, there's an abundance of mis-tagged products - recently as an example I filtered on point and click and FMV and the stuff it was coming back with about as relevant as them recommending Tekken.

The "Community Recommends" section is also extremely poor, I've clicked through to games from it before to see reviews where people have left negatives just to warn other buyers coming from "community recommends".

Recommendations are like this on many sites IMO, I frequently get the same experience on Amazon when im looking for products, the cheapest biggest pile of non relevant rubbish is what gets recommended because people know how to use the system.

As an example, im playing the Infectious Madness of Dr Dekker at the moment, Steam recommends Boneworks and Totally Accurate Battle Simulator in amongst the recommendations based on playing this. The correct recommendations would be something like Poe and Munro, Jessika, The Bunker, The Complex etc One of those is by the same dev and its not even a recommendation ;)

[Eli]

Originally posted by SeansShow:

The best thing to do is just ignore steam side recommendations completely and if you want recommendations go to a games hub and ask, what other games do people play, what games are like this etc.

I frequently filter on tags for other genres to look for buying suggestions, there's an abundance of mis-tagged products - recently as an example I filtered on point and click and FMV and the stuff it was coming back with about as relevant as them recommending Tekken.

The "Community Recommends" section is also extremely poor, I've clicked through to games from it before to see reviews where people have left negatives just warn other buyers coming from "community recommends".

Recommendations are like this on many sites IMO, I frequently get the same experience on Amazon when im looking for products, the cheapest biggest pile of non relevant rubbish is what gets recommended because people know how to use the system.

As an example, im playing the Infectious Madness of Dr Dekker at the moment, Steam recommends Boneworks and Totally Accurate Battle Simulator in amongst the recommendations based on playing this. The correct recommendations would be something like Poe and Munro, Jessika, The Bunker, The Complex etc

These are games showing up in my Discovery Queue.

But this is my problem, these games are NOT on my account. I've gone through support and deleted them from my library entirely. But they're still showing up after two years. One game that I own and play is in the same vein (multiple similar tags) but it's not being used as a reference yet these games that I deleted from my account two years ago are?

I don't want to ignore them, I want them gone. These aren't games being recommended based on my recent activity, these are the games under the "How is this relevant to you?" box because they're 'similar' to what Steam is trying to recommend me. If I went out of my way to clear any trace of these games from my account and library, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be recommended games just like them while using those games that I removed as the jumping off point for those recommendations.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Eli:

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Play other games. I once played Codename Panzers as my only game for two weeks, suddenly my DQ was 70% WW2 RTS games. I rarely play such games, I got nostalgic, and I got "punished" for it. Two weeks of playing other games resulted in my DQ changing back to how it was, so to speak.

I haven't touched these games in almost two years, and it's been about that long since I went through Support to remove them from my account. I haven't touched Garry's Mod since I bought it in 2016 and yet it's being used as a 'relevant' game when Steam is recommending games to me in my queue. It's not even installed, and I had to do a complete clean install of Steam and all of my games about two months ago onto a new hard drive. Granted I still own Garry's Mod but why are these free games (that I deleted from my account through the support system) still popping up under the "Similar to these games you've played" section?

Crazy Tiger's repsonse is correct - play other games.

The error in your thinking there may be because you are still playing similar games to those that were referred. Of course, if your tastes are quite narrow, then this problem will ALWAYS be worse for you.

Garry;s Mod for exmaple, is going to show up under almost every genre because, frankly, it can be every genre. That's endemic of it.

But the crappy games you're referring to - go and play some of the games in your inventory that are wildly different. Go and leave them running while you're doing something else. Eventually it will pick up engouh to stop recommending stuff.

Of course, buying stuff also affects this too. So if you've been viewing and/or buying the same sort of games, then you're also going to make the problem worse.

The point is that you simply have to force the algorithm to "unlearn" what you've previously told it.

[Eli]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Originally posted by Eli:

I haven't touched these games in almost two years, and it's been about that long since I went through Support to remove them from my account. I haven't touched Garry's Mod since I bought it in 2016 and yet it's being used as a 'relevant' game when Steam is recommending games to me in my queue. It's not even installed, and I had to do a complete clean install of Steam and all of my games about two months ago onto a new hard drive. Granted I still own Garry's Mod but why are these free games (that I deleted from my account through the support system) still popping up under the "Similar to these games you've played" section?

Crazy Tiger's repsonse is correct - play other games.

The error in your thinking there may be because you are still playing similar games to those that were referred. Of course, if your tastes are quite narrow, then this problem will ALWAYS be worse for you.

Garry;s Mod for exmaple, is going to show up under almost every genre because, frankly, it can be every genre. That's endemic of it.

But the crappy games you're referring to - go and play some of the games in your inventory that are wildly different. Go and leave them running while you're doing something else. Eventually it will pick up engouh to stop recommending stuff.

Of course, buying stuff also affects this too. So if you've been viewing and/or buying the same sort of games, then you're also going to make the problem worse.

The point is that you simply have to force the algorithm to "unlearn" what you've previously told it.

I play other games, I play a lot of different games. But I feel like no one is understanding what my problem is. I'm talking about the games that show up in the section to the right of the screen under the game information where there is a box asking 'how this game is relevant' to me. There are games that I have removed from my account via the support and yet they're still showing up as me having played them, which means they're affecting my discovery queue even though I haven't played any games like that IN TWO YEARS. Ignore what I said about Garry's Mod, I was just using it as a bad example. What I want is that I want to remove the free games that I've already deleted from my account and library from showing up as a connection to recent recommendations simply because they share a similar tag.

I'm not talking about the games that Steam is recommending me, I'm talking about the games that Steam is USING to recommend games to me. I removed them from my library because I don't want them on my account anymore, I don't want to see them and I don't want to play games like them. I've got tags to block the main game play aspect but it'll still say that these games are similar to other ones because they share one or two similar sub tags. I'm sick of seeing these games from two years ago being recommended on games that are otherwise completely unrelated.

I want to erase the reminders that I played them in the first place, they're not in my library and you would think that going through support to remove them from your account would wipe them from your games played history so that it doesn't taint the accuracy of the recommendation list.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Eli:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Crazy Tiger's repsonse is correct - play other games.

The error in your thinking there may be because you are still playing similar games to those that were referred. Of course, if your tastes are quite narrow, then this problem will ALWAYS be worse for you.

Garry;s Mod for exmaple, is going to show up under almost every genre because, frankly, it can be every genre. That's endemic of it.

But the crappy games you're referring to - go and play some of the games in your inventory that are wildly different. Go and leave them running while you're doing something else. Eventually it will pick up engouh to stop recommending stuff.

Of course, buying stuff also affects this too. So if you've been viewing and/or buying the same sort of games, then you're also going to make the problem worse.

The point is that you simply have to force the algorithm to "unlearn" what you've previously told it.

I play other games, I play a lot of different games. But I feel like no one is understanding what my problem is. I'm talking about the games that show up in the section to the right of the screen under the game information where there is a box asking 'how this game is relevant' to me. There are games that I have removed from my account via the support and yet they're still showing up as me having played them, which means they're affecting my discovery queue even though I haven't played any games like that IN TWO YEARS. Ignore what I said about Garry's Mod, I was just using it as a bad example. What I want is that I want to remove the free games that I've already deleted from my account and library from showing up as a connection to recent recommendations simply because they share a similar tag.

I'm not talking about the games that Steam is recommending me, I'm talking about the games that Steam is USING to recommend games to me. I removed them from my library because I don't want them on my account anymore, I don't want to see them and I don't want to play games like them. I've got tags to block the main game play aspect but it'll still say that these games are similar to other ones because they share one or two similar sub tags. I'm sick of seeing these games from two years ago being recommended on games that are otherwise completely unrelated.

I want to erase the reminders that I played them in the first place, they're not in my library and you would think that going through support to remove them from your account would wipe them from your games played history so that it doesn't taint the accuracy of the recommendation list.

Then you're misunderstading the overarching point.

The point is it MUST use your recommendation algorithm to determine those games. It doesn't matter whether this is entirely a separate listing to your other recommendations. It HAS to use that self-same data.

And as that, the only way you can change it is to do as we've suggested.

That's it.

[Exemplifire]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Originally posted by Eli:

I play other games, I play a lot of different games. But I feel like no one is understanding what my problem is. I'm talking about the games that show up in the section to the right of the screen under the game information where there is a box asking 'how this game is relevant' to me. There are games that I have removed from my account via the support and yet they're still showing up as me having played them, which means they're affecting my discovery queue even though I haven't played any games like that IN TWO YEARS. Ignore what I said about Garry's Mod, I was just using it as a bad example. What I want is that I want to remove the free games that I've already deleted from my account and library from showing up as a connection to recent recommendations simply because they share a similar tag.

I'm not talking about the games that Steam is recommending me, I'm talking about the games that Steam is USING to recommend games to me. I removed them from my library because I don't want them on my account anymore, I don't want to see them and I don't want to play games like them. I've got tags to block the main game play aspect but it'll still say that these games are similar to other ones because they share one or two similar sub tags. I'm sick of seeing these games from two years ago being recommended on games that are otherwise completely unrelated.

I want to erase the reminders that I played them in the first place, they're not in my library and you would think that going through support to remove them from your account would wipe them from your games played history so that it doesn't taint the accuracy of the recommendation list.

Then you're misunderstanding the overarching point.

The point is it MUST use your recommendation algorithm to determine those games. It doesn't matter whether this is entirely a separate listing to your other recommendations. It HAS to use that self-same data.

And as that, the only way you can change it is to do as we've suggested.

That's it.

No. You're wrong. I downloaded Conan Exiles to try out over 5 years ago. I played it for 0.9 hours and refunded it. Never played it again. Set it to all Ignore settings like the OP.

It still comes up in the "Is This Relevant To You?" section practically anytime I view an Open World Co-Op game or Survival game.

It most likely is not using your Ignore Settings in this section of Steam.

Is This Relevant:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3040649718

Here are the Ignore Settings:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3040650261

Since the time that I played and refunded that game I have put in the following game activity:

3000 hours in Warframe
2000 hours in Gears 5
500 hours in Gotham Knights
400 hours in Outriders and Marvel's Avengers
225 hours in Code Vein
200 hours in Horizon Zero Dawn and Darksiders 3
150 hours in Gears Tactics, Midnight Suns and Arkham Knight
100 hours in Dark Souls 1-3, God of War, Spider-Man and Prey
75 hours in Remnant, Guardians of the Galaxy and Quantum Break
50 hours in Man of Medan, Enslaved, Alan Wake, Miles Morales and Beyond Two Souls

Those are just the big chunks of time. That should be plenty of time and games to remove a recommendation of relevance for a game I played for 0.9 hours, refunded and then Ignored. 5 years ago!

The only thing that makes sense is that the Is This Relevant To You? section is not using your Ignored settings.

I'm considering opening a support ticket, because I'm tired of seeing this ♥♥♥♥!